Tens of hundreds of thousands of calls to Australia’s welfare company going unanswered

CANBERRA, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) — Nearly 50 million phone calls to Australia’s national welfare agency, Centrelink, went unanswered in the 12 months to June 2018.

The Department of Human Services (DHS) revealed that 48 million calls were not answered during a series of Senate hearings, saying that it was a slight improvement from the 55 million unanswered calls in 2016-17.

“We thought it was high when we were getting to 22 million, and that was 2014-15, so we’ve still got a significant way to go,” Greens Senator Rachel Siewart told the hearing.

“It’s good to see it’s come down but sorry if I’m not popping any party poppers yet.”